1913: Violence escalates on coal-strike front

The coal strike in Southern Colorado continued on its violent path the week of Oct. 6, 1913, according to The Pueblo Chieftain.

On Friday, a cowherder, Mack Powell, 32, was hit by a bullet and killed while working on his horse near Ludlow. A “pitched battle” between strikers and mine guards had broken out and lasted for two hours, and Powell became another victim of the war.

That day, Colorado officials ordered the mine operators to meet with the United Mine Workers of America or the state would seek a congressional investigation into the labor situation.

On Monday. Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, who was referred to by politicians as “the grandmother of all agitators,” spoke before 500 people in Woodman Hall on West Fourth Street in Pueblo. She said “Scabs should become union men and real women should not allow the conditions under which miner families were living,” in the southern coal fields. Union Vice President Frank Hayes told the crowd that one problem with the companies was they under-reported tonnage (a method of determining miner pay). Hayes added that the press in Pueblo was misreporting the actions to gain the favor of mining company officials.

On Tuesday, those mine operators expressed displeasure with Gov. Elias Ammons because he hadn’t called out the militia to deal with strikers. Ammons infuriated the owners because he ordered all mine guards to remain on company property when armed.

Strikers were dangerous, too. They kidnapped two non-union brothers and allowed one to go free, telling him to go to the mines, confiscate the equipment they said they owned, return it to them or his brother would be beaten if he did not return. He did not return.

On Wednesday, a gunfight broke out between the two sides in Ludlow at the Colorado and Southern Railroad station, injuring three people. Las Animas Sheriff Grisham deputized 22 militiamen to help him staunch the conflict. The owners threatened to close the mines for 60 days unless the governor called out the militia.

On Thursday, Ammons put the militia on alert.

On Sunday, it was reported that the new Pueblo term of the federal grand jury would be looking into the strike.

The strikers wanted the UMW recognized as their representatives, a 10 percent pay raise, an eight-hour day, the right to live and shop where they wanted, and the right to choose their own physicians.

In other news , the state Supreme Court ordered that no liquor could be transported into or through “dry zones” in Colorado. In Pueblo that meant Ward 1 (north of 10th Street and west of Fountain Creek); Ward 2 (everything in the city east of the Fountain); and Ward 7 (residential parts of the mesa east of Union Avenue). In 1909, in a city election that included an alcohol prohibition question, those areas had voted to ban liquor.

The ruling, a reporter predicted, “was the forerunner of a vigorous dry campaign.”

Edith Morris, who had spent months recovering from injuries received in the Swift Block fire earlier in the year, died from new wounds suffered when she was pinned under a car during a trip to Colorado Springs on Monday of that week. The paper said the day of the accident was the first day she had been outside since the fire.

Deputy Sam Fabrizio caught alleged murderer John DeFelice near the Eiler’s smelter. DeFelice had reportedly killed his neighbor and fellow Sicilian Noe Rais over a longtime feud the previous week. DeFelice did not deny the crime, and told a reporter that Rais had taken liberties with his wife, spread lies about him and had destroyed his home in the old country.

Dick Smith, a steel worker who had slashed the throat of a young black man during a teamster’s strike earlier in the year, and claimed that was OK because that’s the way things were in his home state of Alabama, blamed typhoid fever for his violent action. Judge Ed. Rizer questioned doctors whether Smith was trying to get out of the attempted murder charge, and he was told the aftermath of the illness could cause delusion. The case was continued.

After just an hour of deliberation, a jury found Camille and Mary Muscotta guilty of the attempted murder of Steve Kelly. Kelly admitted that he drank a half-pint of whiskey and two beers at the Muscottas’ Avondale business and then refused to pay. Camille Muscotta pulled a .22-caliber rifle on Kelly and the two grappled over the weapon before Kelly was shot in the stomach once and, according to witnesses, as many as three times. A doctor testified that he could not determine how many shots hit Kelly, who was contrite on the stand over the incident. The Muscottas posted $1,000 bail each and their lawyer Alec J. Stewart said he would seek a new trial.

J.M. Megler, the “Dump Czar,” was found not guilty of assaulting 12-year-old Dewey Miller at the West Fourth Street trash field. The judge told Megler to keep his hands to himself in the future.

Mary Butkovich, a known Grove troublemaker, was in police court for the third time in 1913, this time for grabbing a neighbor’s chicken that had wandered into her backyard. When the chicken tried to escape, Butkovich chased it around the block, while spitting out foul language in Russian and English. The Greenbergs, the chicken’s owners, tried to get the fowl back, but Butkovich wouldn’t give them the bird. She was sentenced to 10 days in jail by Judge G.L. Seits.

The Denver & Rio Grand ice house on B and First streets burned down, causing $10,000 in damages.

Finally, something nice happened . Chieftain reporters located Katherine Raider Moran, a widow living at 415 W. Eighth. Moran, who had left her native Tennessee 25 years earlier, and was supported by her two sons who worked for a railroad, was the heir to a fortune — $4 million. She had lost touch with her family, but they found her.